1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the field of video editing, more particularly, to the implementation of a volume mixing ratio between at least two soundtracks in a video editing environment, wherein each soundtrack is a speech soundtrack or a music soundtrack.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Video editing environments are generally created by software hosted by a computing device or dedicated video editing system. The availability of affordable hand-held analogue and, more recently, digital video recording devices, has made video recording accessible, viable and popular among amateur users. Furthermore, improvements in processing capacity in Personal Computers (PCs), now means that the amateur user can edit digital video without the requirement for any special equipment other than a PC equipped with suitable software.
A feature of prior art video editing environments is the ‘(volume) mixing energy ratio’. This parameter establishes the relative volumes between the speech soundtrack and the music soundtrack of a video presentation, where music has been selected. Naturally, as the content of the video presentation changes, so might the required emphasis on either music or speech. For example, an important conversation or speech where music is only a background consideration, will require a different mixing energy ratio to situations where music is employed to convey a mood or emotion, and any conversation is incidental and background.
A drawback with prior art video editing environments is that the user is only given the opportunity to select a mixing energy ratio that will apply to the entire section of video being edited, or editing session. One solution, which has been employed by professional video editors for decades, is manual adjustment of the mixing energy ratio segment by segment. But even for a skilled practitioner, this approach is onerous, added to which the amateur may only realize a degree of frustration and perhaps indifferent results too. Moreover, the above approach doesn't take advantage of the benefits that modern computing devices can offer.
This ‘one size fits all’ approach, therefore, can only offer a ‘best fit’ solution and cannot provide ‘one touch’ implementation of an adaptive mixing energy ratio, the level of which is in keeping with the requirements of each segment of a video presentation, as would be of great benefit to professional and amateur video editors alike.